Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett [213]
Once before Philippa had been beyond the Black Eunuch’s courtyard, to the little paved court with the fountain from which rose the steps inside the Divan tower. Beyond that again, she had been told, was the anteroom to the Carriage Gate, where she and the other girls would enter the great covered carts in the Second Court to travel with the harem, if the Sultan ever required it.
For a moment she wondered if indeed she was about to be taken out into the open air; to ride perhaps by Roxelana Sultan’s side on a visit to St Sophia.… But it was Tuesday, not Friday; and instead of passing through to the Carriage Gate, the Sultana signed to her to open the door into the tower. Holding it open, Philippa saw with interest that there was no living being in sight: no eunuchs; no servants. Whatever Roxelana was about to do, it was not to be witnessed. Then she followed her mistress up the steps of the tower.
The small, low room she presently entered held a carpet and a cloth-of-gold stool, and was lit by one narrow window, intricately gilded and grilled. It looked, Philippa saw, as her mistress seated herself, spreading her robes on the stool, directly down into what must be the Hall of the Divan. And Roxelana, she now realized, had no business there at all. For it was, if harem rumour was correct, the Sultan’s personal listening-post. Unveiled; her heart thudding underneath the Tartar cloud shapes on her kaftán, Philippa dropped at a sign to the carpet, and sat crosslegged staring at the moving headgear below.
The variety of turbans seemed endless. A doughnut, closed in with pleating and a button on top. A severe square, cuffed and pleated meanly and vertically. A cone, with a headband. A cottage loaf, swathed round the brow. A circle of quilting, with dewlaps drooping above. An immaculate study in bandaging, with the pleats at right angles; the whole thing rakish and flat. And another, round as a ball of thick wool. The tall cone hat of a Bektashi dervish, and the great onion globe of the Agha of Janissaries, wound round a fez. Then he disappeared, and was replaced by the Grand Mufti, all in green. They nearly all had moustaches: Prolixos duntax mystaces gestant. Bellon, quoted by Mr Crawford. She now knew what it meant.
The spinet they were presenting had come. She had heard that, and knew it had gone into the Treasury, with the other big gifts: the rest they would bring with them. She wondered if Mr Crawford had found out yet—but of course, Archie would have told him … unless anything had happened to Archie?—if he had found out that she was here. And Kuzucuyum.
One could not, of course, whistle through the grille. Or, since Roxelana’s presence was illicit, one would disappear sacked into the Bosphorus. So one must simply be prepared to look, and to listen.…
I wish, Kate used to say, you would one day discover the sneaky and (on occasion) intoxicating uses of a little self-discipline.…
So Mr Crawford was expected, down below in the Divan. Philippa tried to recall what she had gleaned of the ceremony. He would come in through the door opposite her, with his chief officers and the departing Ambassador, and would talk to the Second Vizier, acting in Rustem Pasha’s absence. He, she supposed, since she couldn’t see him, must be seated in state opposite the door, and immediately under her window.
Then they ate—in the adjoining room, perhaps, walking through the doorless arch in the pierced screen which was all that divided the two rooms. Then they would robe to go to the Sultan, but by then, probably, Roxelana would be bored and would have required her to leave.… Heavens, she’d asked her something twice already. Scarlet, Philippa bent to pick up the little fan Roxelana had indicated, and when she straightened, Lymond stood in the doorway below.
Blessed with relations in London, Philippa was well versed in court costume; and her weeks in the harem had accustomed her to inordinate finery. So she paid no attention to the maligned velvet and silver and looked only at the way he stood; his hands